A Nouveau

It’s been a very long few days.

Packing has never been on my list of favorite past times but night after night I slaved away at getting another box labeled and taped. It seems that no matter how long you stick with it, the work is never done.

Even now it’s almost done. Yesterday I did the daily drop of goods for the sally ann and took at the recyclables to the return-it center. These tasks are a tad tedious but they’re SO close! Almost time to rejoice!

The day before the move was a rainy one. I had gone out to make a return and the sound of the falling rain was intense as it beat down on the pavement and the wind kept blowing my hood off. I pulled my camera out for a brief moment to enjoy the patterns it made on my car window. It seems I have the chance to see the world again with new eyes.

I rushed home and continued on packing.

Each day my building complex feeling vastly different from the last and as moving day finally came I walked down to the parkade and it stopped feeling like home, like a shedding of old skin this season was over. In some ways I grieve it but I’m thankful to say that my new room already feels like home. I think it’s safe to say I can hardly process it all because it’s so overwhelming to know that in a few short months everything will be unrecognizable. New landscape, new language, new faces, new routines and a life I need to learn to walk in step with. With all the joy I have for the future on a day like today I can also admit the loss of my old life. The loss of an old friend and how sad it makes me. It’s funny because I don’t usually feel this sadness because the joy trumps it, and that is still true even now, but it’s true that feeling still remains deep in my being that I am moving on to a life very different from the old. I am walking with head held high, traveling across the world on my own as a woman determined to live more fully. To appreciate the moments just like the rain on the car window.

Soon things will settle and it’ll all feel normal again. But in the meantime I think of the film Chocolat and how she could feel when the north winds would begin to blow and she knew it was time they picked up and started another chapter. That’s how it feels, the winds changed and I have no choice but to pick up and get carried off and everything appears different, life can’t go on the way it always has.

It’s the beginning of a new chapter and it might start out with a bit of heartache, but it doesn’t end this way.